


To Boldly Go

by Byacolate



Category: Mass Effect: Andromeda
Genre: Bad Flirting, M/M, One Shot, Wooing
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2017-05-21
Updated: 2017-05-21
Packaged: 2018-11-03 11:00:59
Rating: Teen And Up Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 2,414
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/10965876
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/Byacolate/pseuds/Byacolate
Summary: Krogan and salarian mating rituals rarely overlap.





	To Boldly Go

**Author's Note:**

  * For [Naopao](https://archiveofourown.org/users/Naopao/gifts).



> a present for naopao from cheese, who would like to add: "Heheheh"

The scene before him was a grim one. 

 

At the center of the sprawling Nexus galley, surrounded by colleagues and superiors alike, a salarian and a human stood in respective horror and fascination at the krogan atop the center-most table. Proud and statuesque, Grend stood, powerful legs spread, relentlessly flexing with every squat to the table's surface. Upon each descent, the would lift a ripe elmohk fruit from the crate before him, stand, and flexingly shove it whole into his mouth.

 

By Persimmon's estimates, he had exceeded twenty.

 

He didn't really need to ask his sister what was happening - it could only be an improvised mating ritual if Acht was present - so he settled quietly at her side to watch. He knew it was only a matter of patience to discover how tragedy would strike.

 

Catching Grend's watering eyes, Grend winked, flexed, and squatted to retrieve not one, not two, but four elmohk.

 

"That isn't a good idea -" Persimmon started, reaching out with an aborted motion as though dragging the crate away would stop what was about to happen next.

 

"He's right," said the Pathfinder solemnly, slapping Persimmon's hand away. "Four elmohk? That's pittance. You gotta get another one, buddy. A nice round five."

 

Muted cheers from the surrounding tables rose up when Grend grinned around his mouthful - juice dripping down his maw - and stooped for a fifth.

 

A testy sigh to Persimmon's right caught his attention. Acht's long arms were folded tight across his chest.  "This is cruel and unusual punishment," he said, mouth twisted in a grimace. "But for whom, I could not say."

 

Grend made a noise, as though in response, and crammed two fistfuls of fruit into his mouth. It took some pushing, some gnawing, plenty of drool and not a little gagging, but finally Grend raised his arms in triumph. Petal cheered loudly enough for the whole room, thumping a fist against the table. "Again!"

 

"That's not..." Persimmon glanced to his right for assistance, but Acht had disappeared. He was already at the door by the time Persimmon saw him; Grend, it seemed, had noticed just in time to watch him slip out. 

 

The floor shook when Grend hopped down from the table to occupy the space left by Acht, despite Petal’s protests. 

 

He made a noise and abruptly stopped, as though he had only just remembered that his mouth was full of fruit. He reached up toward his mouth, and in a moment of horrific inspiration, Persimmon reached up to touch his arm. “No, buddy.”

 

Grend regarded him for a moment before lowering his arm. Persimmon smiled. And then he flinched as elmohk juice spattered over his front with one great voracious chomp of Grend’s jaws.

 

“That was impressive, right?” Grend said once his mouth was nearly empty, gazing longingly toward the door. Petal punched his shoulder. 

 

“Only an idiot wouldn’t have been impressed by that display, and Acht is basically a genius.”

 

For a moment Grend brightened before he deflated again, juice dripping into his carapace. 

 

“Did his face look impressed? His eyes were popping, but I think they just do that.”

 

A few human engineers cautiously approached the abandoned crate of fruit, ultimately thought better of it and skulked away without catching Grend’s attention. He sighed and sat on the bench with such force that it gave a mighty groan. “I’ve tried everything to win his heart and his big long body. What am I gonna do?” 

 

“Bathe, I hope,” Petal said, flopping down beside him. Grend wiped forlornly at his chin. Persimmon settled a little more delicately on his other side.

 

“You’re still trying to, um…  _ woo  _ him like a krogan. All the… the wrestling, the flexing, the gratuitous displays of the grotesque, they’re very… impressive. But maybe you ought to try a subtler approach.”

 

Grend fixed his eyes on the younger Ryder, a stringy bit of elmokh flesh dangling from his incisors. “Subtle…?”

 

“That’ll never work,” the Pathfinder said at Grend’s right, slapping her thigh. “You’ve just gotta think bigger. There’s this flying bug monster on Voeld -”

 

“Hear me out,” Persimmon said, pulling Grend’s attention back. “Think about your audience - really think. Your feats impress you, but maybe that isn’t his style.”

 

“Doesn’t happen. Flexing is the truest form of romance.”

 

“I think she’s right,” Grend admitted. 

 

“What do you know about Acht?” Persimmon implored, knocking his fist against Grend’s bracer. “Really, really think. This isn’t for a crowd, or for Petal. This isn’t even for you. What would Acht - just Acht - really appreciate?”

 

Grend sank into his own head far more quickly than Persimmon imagined, to Petal’s vexation. He stood in the middle of her anecdote about Vetra Nyx’s precision blaster - one of Grend’s very favorite topics - and wandered out of the galley in a daze.

 

“Great,” she griped, shoving an elmohk into her own mouth. “You’ve made him boring.”

  
  
  
  
  
  
  
  
  


Boring was the least of their worries. Whatever Persimmon had said had also made him gone. 

 

Not gone-gone; it wasn’t as thought Grend had truly disappeared. The Pathfinder could track any omni-tool she liked, with enough lies and motivation, and all of Kesh’s ships were accounted for in and out of port. They knew where he was, if not why he was there. 

 

The Ryder twins, quite reasonably, were concerned by his sudden and silent departure. It seemed that they were not the only ones.

 

After four days of his absence and nonresponse to their communication, Petal’s unflappable veneer crumbled to dust and in her restlessness, she gathered her crew and pointed the Tempest toward Grend’s coordinates. She returned the following week, heralding news of the long lost krogan. It wasn’t long after her return that the door to the Hyperion’s shuttle opened an an inordinately uncomfortable salarian crept through. 

 

“Oh,” he said, clearly as startled by their presence as they were with his. “Hello. I was just… looking for the two of you. That isn’t to say the both of you, together, wasn’t necessary, but…”

 

“You’ve found us,” Petal said with a finger gun and a wink. 

 

“Yes. Quite.”

 

He stood in the middle of the open door, blinking back at them for a long, silent moment before coughing into his fist. Knowing that Petal was content to let awkwardness hang and Acht could bolt at any moment, Persimmon beckoned him closer. “What can we help you with?” 

 

Almost as though it pained him, Acht stepped all the way through. 

 

“It’s nothing, really…”

 

“Oh, well. Good.”

 

Persimmon elbowed his sister in the side. “Really, we’re here to help.”

 

“I don’t need… it isn’t…” Acht pursed his thin lips. “The brute -”

 

“Which brute?” Petal stuck a nail between her front teeth. “We know lots of brutes, don’t we?”

 

“Grend,” Acht ground out, waving a hand through the air as though to clear it of the name. “He’s been due a check up since his last imbecilic injury. Normally I can’t pay him to keep away, but he hasn’t been in for days.”

 

The Ryders exchanged quick glances. Petal did something with her eyebrows that seemed to convey a hidden message. Persimmon never understood those, but the passion was real. 

 

“Oh, he’s… you know.” Petal gestured vaguely. “Around.”

 

“Working,” Persimmon nodded. Acht blinked.

 

“For this long?”

 

He seemed taken aback by his own question - maybe even moreso than the twins. 

 

“Might be a bit longer, too,” Petal said. “Job’s not quite done.”

 

“Yes. Well.” Acht was already starting to backtrack, halfway out the door toward the tram. “Whenever that may be, it will be too soon.”

 

“Uh huh.” Petal wiggled her fingers as he turned, back ramrod straight as he power-walked from the room like a shot. She turned to Persimmon, glee in her eyes. “You recorded that, right, SAM? For posterity?”

 

“Not for posterity, but for Grend,” SAM responded to them both. 

 

“Aww, shucks. Let Acht know he has competition?”

 

Whatever SAM’s response was was for the Pathfinder’s ears alone.

  
  
  
  
  
  
  
  


On the eleventh day of Grend’s absence, Persimmon began to worry anew.

 

On the thirteenth, Petal slapped him on the back. “Shouldn’t be long now. Unless he was eaten alive by raiders.”

 

On the seventeenth, just as Persimmon himself began perusing discrete shuttles prepared for launch, his comm beeped with an incoming message from his sister. 

 

[Nexus, med bay. You’ll want to see this.]

  
  
  
  
  
  
  
  


The scene before him was a… new one, though not entirely unique. Grend was covered in filth - dark topsoil native to Havarl, upon closer inspection - and he was covered in claw marks and recoil burn.

 

But cradled in his arms and wound in great looping coils around his shoulders and carapace was a plant. Its leaves were serrated around the edges and tinged violet and, knowing Havarl, likely bioluminescent. Despite his thorough study of Havarl's flora, even Persimmon was unfamiliar with Grend's surprise.

 

How deeply Grend must have delved into the forests of Havarl to find it... well, maybe Jaal would know.

 

"It's yours," Grend said, thrusting his prize toward Acht despite the vines curled around his biceps like an embrace. "I know you like plants. Which is what this is. This is definitely a plant, I can promise you that."

 

"Kinda worried it's not a plant now," Petal mused, leaning against the opposite side of the doorway. Persimmon paid her no mind, instead focused entirely on Acht who… 

 

Who was wearing an expression he had never seen before. He seemed almost at a loss - surprised, certainly. Uncertain. Even… touched. 

 

“You… ahem.” He forcibly cleared his throat when his voice cracked. He lowered his volume, as though only just now aware of the other people in the room - patients and spectators alike. “That is to say… this was a trite thing to risk and garner bodily harm for. It was characteristically foolish of you. Even so, well, I… have to thank you… Grend.”

 

Grend’s mouth stretched over what might have been every single tooth in his head as he guffawed, bashfully tucking the plant back against his chest. The basket-made-pot in his hand cracked in warning against the armor there. “You like it? I thought - uhh. I hoped you would. It reminded me of you.”

 

Acht wrung his fingers together before catching himself and clasping both hands firmly behind his back. “I… appreciate the gesture. And it is…”

 

“A rare find,” Persimmon supplied, in spite of himself. Acht flinched - he probably would have preferred to pretend forever that no one bore witness to the display. “I’ve never seen anything like it. It looks affectionate.”

 

“Oh yeah,” Grend grinned. “It’s real friendly. Real friendly, if you know what I -”

 

“I do,” Acht interrupted, a strange tinge to his face. “Like it. I do like it, Grend. If you wouldn’t mind, perhaps you could… tote this to my quarters?”   
  
“Uhhh.” Grend looked between the plant and Acht, like he was trying to decipher some hidden code. Acht himself seemed as though he might flatten himself to a wall to blend in with his surroundings like a chameleon and make his escape. “You want me to -”

 

“Just - follow me, please,” Acht said as quick as his pace as he wove his way around Grend’s body in flight. Grend could barely follow with his eyes alone at the pace Acht set, and he looked between the Ryder twins. The Pathfinder gave him two thumbs up and made a rude gesture that had Grend perking right up.

 

Cutting him off in the middle of a guffaw, Persimmon jerked his head meaningfully toward the door and Grend jumped, hastening to follow after Acht’s cloud of dust and winking upon his departure. Doctor Carlyle gave them both a wry look and a shake of his head before returning to his patients. 

 

“Well,” Petal sighed, stretching her arms above her head, “good thing he took my advice. Never fails.”

 

“Mm hmm,” Persimmon hummed, flicking his omni-tool on to fire off an article to Grend entitled: _ Safety and Salarian Sex - An Interspecies Guide to the Wonderful World of the Cloaca. _ “You always did know best.”

 

 

 

 

 

**Bonus: Two Weeks Before**

 

 

 

 

Grend’s red gums flash toward his very most favorite salarian as Ryder drags him bodily into the med bay. She’s more of a crutch than an aid, Grend thinks, until she hauls him onto a table and slaps his bare bicep. He’s pretty sure the gash across his gut isn’t deep enough to spill any of his entrails out onto Acht’s pristine floor. 

“He’s all yours,” Ryder says, clapping imaginary dust from her palms as she walks backwards from the bay. Grend returns the finger guns she aims his way, only bleeding a little onto the table.

“Unbelievable.”

“Eheh.” Grend slaps his own knee, grinning broadly at Acht. “You’ll never believe what happened.”

Acht doesn’t even look his way for a moment, tapping furiously away at his data pad. “I have nothing but suspension of disbelief for you. Are you going to… disrobe, or wait for the trickle of your innards to sully my workspace.”

Grend hastens to unbuckle the armor around his chest and carapace, dropping it all to the floor with a clatter that makes Acht grimace. “Heh. Sorry.”

Wordlessly, Acht scans the wound tutting to himself as the results load. While he works, Grend straightens his spine, spreading his arms a little to grip the sides of the table to accentuate the bulge of his biceps and the wicked gaping wound. It’s a pretty good gash - it’ll leave a scar for sure, if he’s careful not to treat it too well -

“So? What did you do?”   
  


Grend brightens, spreading his arms out. “It’s a great story -”

Acht holds up a hand. “Just the basics, please. I need to know what to prescribe.” 

“So, we were docking, right, just back from Voeld with some tech - shiny stuff, real pointy. Ryder ‘n’ me, we were locked in combat on the ramp, and I was seconds away from winning when -”

“Were you impaled on alien technology?”

“Uh huh. But it’s only ‘cause Ryder fights dirty.” Acht pokes at his screen with a note of finality. 

“Lean back please. Lie down on the table.”

“Yeah, sure. You’ll never believe it,” Grend continues, turning and kicking his legs up to lay across the surface as a mask lowers from the ceiling toward his head.

“Secure the mask, please.”

“The pyjak took a piss on the ramp - right on the ramp! - and I was grappled to the edge, and…” 

Everything goes fuzzy and warm as Grend’s story slowly falls asleep with him.

**Author's Note:**

> I'm writing a high fantasy comic about a wandering bard! [Check it out from the beginning HERE!](https://bardbouquet.tumblr.com/post/179195348759/a-dwarven-heirloom-a-blade-in-the-dark-and-a)
> 
> Inquire about fic reque$ts [here!](http://wardencommando.tumblr.com/ask)  
> Tumblr: [wardencommando](http://wardencommando.tumblr.com/).  
> 


End file.
